Weatherly native headed to Olympics as coach for snowboard, ski teams

When Chad Gerhard was growing up in the tiny borough of Weatherly, he never dreamt that he'd someday be halfway around the world, much less helping his country at the Winter Olympic Games.

But that's exactly what he'll be doing next month.

The 2004 Weatherly Area High School graduate is the Strength and Conditioning Coach for the U.S. Snowboard Half-pipe and U.S. Aerials teams, and will be marching out with Team USA during the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Just the thought of it all is a bit mind-boggling for Gerhard, still a small town guy at heart, and one who now finds himself headed for the world's biggest stage.

"I get to go there and go to the Olympics? I'm beyond excited!" said Gerhard, who lives in Park City, Utah but was back in Weatherly over the holidays visiting family and friends. "It's funny. Here's a kid from Pennsylvania, my entire family lives in Weatherly, so living in Utah is a whole new experience. It's mind-blowing just to be on that side of the country. And now I get to go to Russia!"

Gerhard's journey from Weatherly to Utah to Russia, and his career path from snowboarding enthusiast to professional coach has taken him down a long and winding road, with a few turns and hurdles thrown in his path.

The journey actually began as a teenager in Weatherly.

The beginning

"I played basketball, baseball and soccer at Weatherly, but I've always been into snowboarding. It's my passion," Gerhard said.

While in Weatherly, he spent 10 years working in the rental shop at Jack Frost Mountain Ski Resort, keeping him close to the mountain and the sport he loved.

"Boarding was all I cared about," he said.

Upon graduating from Weatherly, he was in the Kinesiology Program at Penn State University from 2004-06, and later found himself at Bloomsburg University, where he pursued a degree in Exercise Science and Athletics, with a concentration in Strength and Conditioning. He earned his bachelor of science degree from Bloom in 2010, and immediately put his degree to work.

Gerhard worked with the YMCA as an assistant wellness director, at Velocity Sports Performance and Spirit Gymnastics Training Center as a sports performance coach, and also served as the strength and conditioning coach at Saint Joseph's University. Soon after, he was the head strength coach at Philadelphia Sports Club - Ignite Sports Performance.

But something was missing for Gerhard. That something was snowboarding.

"I love coaching, and I've always been into snowboarding," he said. "I was trying to figure out how I could combine exercise science with snowboarding. It never crossed my mind that I could do that with Olympic snowboarders."

Gerhard began his search on Google for a job that would allow him to continue his line of work and mesh it with his longtime passion of snowboarding.

He found that in Park City.

"I started Googling things, and the Center of Excellence came up," Gerhard said. "I started sending emails to anyone and everyone in the company directory. I learned that there were internships available in 2012, I applied and I got accepted."

The Center of Excellence is a national training and education center providing world-class facilities and educational resources for the United States Ski & Snowboard Association (USSA) athletes, coaches, clubs and others.

Hurdles along the way

With a small amount of money and no promise of full-time employment, Gerhard left Pennsylvania and headed west to fulfill his dream.

"I quit my full-time job and moved across the country in my Jeep Cherokee. It was a gamble," he said. "I was unpaid for six months, and I didn't have a lot of money saved up. The only person I knew out there was (Weatherly graduate) Austin O'Shura, who lived in Salt Lake City. I even slept on his couch for a couple weeks."

And then things got tougher.

"Three months into the internship my arrangement where I was living (in Park City) fell through, and I ended up sleeping in my Jeep for three weeks to save money. At that point I said to myself 'What am I doing?'"

Just when things couldn't get much worse, Gerhard got the break he needed.

"After the six-month internship was through, I ended up getting offered a job in the high performance laboratory, overseeing all of the testing for the U.S. Olympic Ski Team."

And Gerhard was on his way.

On the job for Team USA

First and foremost, Gerhard manages the high performance sports science laboratory in the 85,000-square foot Center of Excellence. There he coordinates and runs testing for 200 Olympic ski and snowboard athletes, and communicates with the high performance department to schedule athletes and testing staff. He is also responsible for quality assurance and budgeting of the entire laboratory.

"The place is hospital-like, very in-depth and very scientific," Gerhard explained. "Bloomsburg gave me a great education in my field, but a lot of what I'm doing now I learned by reading and then applying what I already knew to it. I'm continually learning. My boss has a PhD and is a rocket scientist. I learned a lot from him."

High performance proficiency of the athletes is at the center of the many tests conducted at the Center of Excellence laboratory.

"We do all kinds of testing, things like how much oxygen can you consume during conditioning," Gerhard explained. "To do that we do testing on a ski treadmill with roller skis on, put them at 30 mph on a 30 percent grade and record the data.

"This summer I was working with a Catapult devise, which is smaller than an I-phone. Athletes are blown away by this. It measures acceleration and velocity. You strap it onto the boot of an athlete and film them, and record the data. For the half-pipe athletes, it measures the G-forces when they land. They land at an average of 15-18 Gs, which is extremely high," he explained.

"In order to withstand those kinds of landings, and crashes, you have to be in great shape. What I do a lot of is injury prevention. It's about how well you can withstand those wrecks. You need to be able to take those falls. I preach that to my athletes all the time."

Though Gerhard's work goes on behind the scenes and is widely unnoticed, it is vital to the success of our Olympic athletes.

"I look at what I do as extremely important," Gerhard said. "The cross country athletes, they're in there every day, 5-6 hours a day. They work out all the time. They have to be in great shape. It comes down to physical fitness.

"On the flip side, the half-pipe is a high-skill sport. The athletes can get by at first not being in great shape. But what I'm trying to do is change that mindset of young athletes. I'm trying to show them in order to compete with the elite athletes in their sport, you need to be in the gym. I think what we do is extremely important."

Working with the stars

Although Gerhard hasn't been working directly with Olympic stars like skier Lindsey Vonn and snowboarder Shaun White on a daily basis, he is working hand in hand with many of the athletes who will be in Sochi in February.

"The caliber of athletes that I work with is unreal," he said. "Most of the athletes I work with are people that you may have never heard of, but they are phenomenal athletes. I'm not working with Shaun White or Lindsey Vonn, but there's (skier) Ted Liggety, (snowboarder) Lindsey Jacobellis, Billy Demong who's a Nordic Combined athlete. When I first started, I'd meet these guys, then I'd have to go home and Google them to see who there were. Once I did, it was like 'Oh my god!'"

Gerhard said both White and Vonn live in California, and don't often take advantage of the services at the Center of Excellence as they have their own personal trainers.

As the strength and conditioning coach for the half-pipe team, he works with the likes of Jacobellis, Kelly Clark, Arielle Gold, Gretchen Bleiler and Hannah Teter.

"I've been there two years now," Gerhard said, still in disbelief that he's a part of Team USA and the sport he loves. "This is actually my job! I'm actually getting paid to do this! I'm so fortunate."

But it is hard work. And after his day on the job is done, it's time to focus on studies.

"I'm going back to school for my masters degree at the University of Central Missouri," he said. "I'm taking an online program in exercise science. It's convenient, but it's challenging. I have 50-plus hours of work a week, and then school on-line."

A working vacation

Things will remain busy during his trip to Sochi next month, although he does plan to soak it all in.

"I'll be working at the Olympics, but at least I get to be there," he said. "We'll be overseeing workouts and things like that. We'll be doing small gym sessions, and stretching. At the end of the day we'll be on computers writing training programs for athletes."

Gerhard said many nations don't even send strength and conditioning coaches to the Olympics, so he considers himself lucky.

"I'm only going because my athletes are going," he said. "We're sending 3-4 pallets of weights and gym equipment over there, so we take it pretty serious."

The Winter Olympics begin on Feb. 6 and conclude on the 23rd.

Between now and then, Gerhard is spending time getting ready for his first trip across the ocean. That includes figuring out things like monetary exchange, cell phone and internet connections for his college courses, and even time differential to know when his college assignments are due.

"It's the first time I'll ever have been overseas," he said. "We're flying into Amsterdam, then Moscow, then to Sochi. I can't believe I feel so sheltered, but I don't want to admit that," Gerhard said with a chuckle.

Gerhard will be leaving the states on Feb. 4 and returning Feb. 25, meaning he'll be there from the opening to the closing ceremonies.

He's sure it will be an experience he'll never forget.

"It will be hard work, but it will very much be worth it," he said. "I hope I get to enjoy it."

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You can see the opening ceremonies live on WBRE TV-28 (NBC) on Friday, Feb. 7 at 7:30 p.m. (local time).

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